On Urban Core Competitiveness

Since 90s of 20~th century, the world economy has experienced two distinct trends, namely, economy globalization and new economy. Economy globalization enables economic resources to move in the whole world freely, in a large scale. And new economy brings much more intensive economic competition and more rapid economic growth. It also brings every city an opportunity, and a challenge as well. In the context of economy globalization and new economy, urban economy becomes more and more important to national economy, while the competition among cities also becomes more drastic. How to raise urban competitiveness, now catches the eyes of all governments and experts in the world.In the tide of globalization, China entered WTO, which makes domestic competition face both China and the world. Not only should our enterprises face world competition, but also our government should face the challenge of how to develop regional economy and raise urban competitiveness. To re-know the city and its competitiveness becomes meaningful to us all. Any city who wants to stand well or make a leap in the competition, needs raise its competitiveness continuously, which makes the study of urban competitiveness and core competitiveness very necessary.Due to productiveness, political and religion reasons, the early cities in the world came into being, but, however, productiveness remained the chief one. The come into being and development of early cities in the world revealed a path-rely-on of geographic position. Industrial revolution played a key role in urbanization. Industrialization and urbanization interacted as mutual promotion role. Social labor division, agglomeration economy, transaction expenses became the mechanism ofurban development. And since, an industry -rely-on path existed in the development of cities.Cities' rapid development resulted in urban competition. Competition manly lies in the fields of limited resource, and so as urban competition. Capital, labor(human resources), information, technology, are included in urban resources. Resources agglomeration, value creation and the quality of residents' life form the urban competitiveness. Urban competitiveness includes many sub-forces, such as forces of system, human resources, market, location, industry, culture,structure, and so on.Among the sub-forces of urban competitiveness, industry force is the most important. Many scholars have studied core competitiveness of enterprises, but leave urban core competitiveness to our study. We can know from the thrive and decrease of the world cities, such as business cities of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and London, as well as New York, that industry competitiveness is urban core competitiveness. Urban core competitiveness is composed of industry force, system force and culture force, among which, industry force is the fundamental core, and system force is the multiplier, culture force is the platform. Urban industry force is composed of industry agglomeration, industry structure, leading industry and industry creation. Urban core competitiveness has mid-macro, relatively stable and dynamic characters. Forces of urban core competitiveness have "wood bucket effect" and "substitute effect".Many scholars have studied industry agglomeration. Industry agglomeration existed due to external-economy, cooperation and competition. It also brings cities with the advantage of specialization, jiont enterprises, sustainable creation, low cost, policy barrier and social culture.Adam Smith, Karl Marx and many economists studied industrial structure. To economic growth, industrial structure is a "Black Case". Industrial structure competitiveness acts as an important part in urban core competitiveness. The theory of industrial structure discovered the law of industrial structure development. We should obey the law, having thought of the practical situations, to take steps to promote the improvement and upgrade of urban industrial structure.We could see almost everywhere in the history of industry development that leading industries always led industry dev...